2Pac’s “All Eyez On Me” Named The Most Profane Popular Rap Album Since 1985

Tupac was a poet who articulated the plight of the downtrodden, intelligently expressed his anger and he liked to curse a lot. Yesterday (April 1st) Best New Ticket did a study of the frequency of profanity in rap albums from 1985-2013 and 2Pac’s All EyeZ=z On Me was #1.

The study only took into account 2,296 rap albums from 1985-2013, which were chosen based on “Total sales, artist name recognition, and album hit density” as well as Best New Ticket‘s opinion of what is “popular”. According to the study, Tupac’s first album on Death Row, 1996′s double disc All Eyez On Me contained 901 instances of cursing at a rate of 33.52 curse words per songs. The most frequent curse word was the N-word appearing 404 times (over 44% of the curses on the album).

While All Eyez On Me being a double disc album with 27 songs could explain its high volume of profanity, the Notorious B.I.G.’s 1997 double disc album Life After Death contained 23 songs and only 615 instances of cursing at a rate of 26.73 curses per song.

Other interesting finds from this study is that 2001 is apparently the most profane year since 1985, averaging over 20 curse words per year among the Top 5 most “influential rap albums” as determined by Best New Ticket.

Check out the detailed breakdown of every curse word from every song of the 2,296 rap albums from 1985-2013 surveyed here.